Cricket: Doctor who saw the need for surgery: Derek Pringle analyses the part played by Ali Bacher in a historic return

WHEN South Africa's cricketers walked out at Lord's last Thursday, few people can have been as genuinely moved by the occasion as Dr Ali Bacher. Just as D F Malan was the architect of the apartheid system that brought about South Africa's sporting isolation, Bacher has, in his own small way, been one of the demolition men.

'It was a wonderful feeling seeing Thabo Mbeki (the deputy president of South Africa) walk on to the grass at Lord's. Something I'll cherish forever,' Bacher said, after the first day's play. 'He genuinely shared my disappointment at our shaky start, after we'd lost Hudson and Cronje. You see, we're all in this together now.'

It is doubtful whether the then banned and exiled ANC members felt this way when Bacher and his employers, the South African Cricket Union, were organising the rebel tours of the Eighties is a moot point, but so enveloping is the spirit of forgiveness in the new South Africa that 'Auld Lang Syne' might be an appropriate choice as their present anthem.

The irony is not lost on Bacher who claims that it was not until the aborted tour by Mike Gatting's rebels in 1989/90 that he felt the true emotions of the people. ' It was only then, when I was in the firing line between the protesters and Gatting that I realised what a cocoon we had been living in. Before that tour, protests were simply not allowed. It was impossible to gauge the feelings of the Africans and the coloureds because we rarely had any dialogue with them.

'Being that close caused me enormous emotional grief and it completely shattered my confidence,' he added. Yet the experience was at once cathartic and illuminating.

Since 1986, Bacher had set up cricket programmes in several of the main black townships like Soweto, Mamelodi and Alexandra. Like the rebel tours, these offered tax breaks to corporate sponsors and a chance to introduce cricket to the football-mad townships.

But no sooner had the cricket programmes begun to take hold than they were thrown into turmoil by the political unrest following the release of Nelson Mandela, the flames of passion being further fanned by the arrogance and total irrelevance of the now beleaguered Gatting tour. Safety could not be guaranteed. It was a combination of these two things, particularly the loss of faith in the townships, that persuaded Bacher to make one of the more memorable U-turns in cricket history. He promptly cancelled the tour.

Apart from this nearly costing him his job, Bacher found himself caught between the white patrons of the sport who were accusing him of treachery and the black politicos in the townships. This outcast status was not something he was used to. Though his parents, both Lithuanian Jews who had fled Hitler's pogroms in Europe, had no doubt experienced the feeling, Bacher, who was born in Johannesburg in 1942, led the typically privileged upbringing that most urban whites enjoyed under apartheid. It was here that he developed his love for cricket, and if he wasn't in the nets, his nose was forever buried in books, lapping up the words of Neville Cardus and Jack Fingleton.

After the Gatting tour, Bacher realised there could be no going back and it took a hastily organised meeting with the ANC's Steve Tshwete, returned from exile, to galvanise his new direction. Tshwete saw that Bacher's efforts had been sincere, if a little misguided, and a dialogue began. Within months, Bacher had gone from pariah to key man, as negotiations with the ANC proceeded at the end of 1990.

There is no doubt that Bacher has a chameleon-like quality, able to adapt to changing circumstances; he is certainly quick on his feet. Critics maintain that things only began to happen because the ANC wished them to, but Bacher realised where the energy for change was coming from and turned potential problems into golden opportunities.

'I think cricket showed the white people in South Africa that the ANC were pragmatists,' Bacher said. 'After an initial backlash from the whites, our assessment of the ANC was shown to be right and they are truly committed towards sport in South Africa.'

Bacher is surely South Africa's most outstanding sports administrator and a progressive one at that. Already he is looking ahead to such things as the World Cup, and Newlands has just been rebuilt with new floodlights, in preparation for a bid to hold the 2002 competition there.

'Huge imbalances still exist and our main priorities are the townships. It will be cricket suicide if, 10 years from now, we find nothing has changed. The team must ultimately have black and white players in it.' How soon that will be is anybody's guess, but a step in the right direction has been taken. As any cricketer will tell you; once you get a good start, anything is possible.

(Photograph omitted)